Iran and six global powers continued high stakes negotiations on Iran's nuclear program on Thursday (June 19) in Vienna.
They are striving for a deal that would limit Iran's nuclear program, subject it to stricter U.N. inspections, lift sanctions impairing Iran's oil-based economy and remove the risk of a wider Middle East war over the dispute.
But with time running out if a precarious extension of the talks past the self-imposed July 20 deadline is to be averted, the two sides seemed far apart over the permissible future scope of Iranian nuclear activity.
Diplomats close to the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity told Reuters the biggest hurdle to overcome was Iran's stance regarding its uranium-enrichment centrifuges, which one negotiator described as a "huge problem".
Centrifuges are machines that spin at supersonic speed to increase the ratio of the fissile isotope in uranium. Low-enriched uranium is used to fuel nuclear power plants, Iran's stated goal, but can also provide material for bombs if refined much further, which the West fears may be Iran's latent goal.
The United States, France, Britain and Germany would like the number of centrifuges Iran maintains to be in the low thousands, while Tehran wants to keep tens of thousands of them in operation. It now has about 19,000 installed, of which about 10,000 are spinning to refine uranium.
The more centrifuges Iran has in operation, the more quickly it would be in position to produce sufficient highly-enriched uranium (HEU) for an atomic bomb, if it were to choose to do so. Western powers want the time frame in which Iran could in theory produce atom bomb fuel to be stretched out as much as possible.
Tehran, however, rejects allegations from Western powers and their allies that it is seeking the capability to produce nuclear weapons, insisting its atomic ambitions are limited to peacefully generating electricity.
Two other stumbling blocks are Iran's planned Arak nuclear reactor - which Western officials suspect could be a source of plutonium, an alternative to HEU as bomb fuel - and Iranian clarification of intelligence indications that it researched how to design bombs in the past - something it also denies doing.
Diplomatic sources have told Reuters that it is increasingly probable Iran will seek a prolongation of the talks deadline.
REUTERS